Autonomy or unanimity?
Local net welfare and European welfare: a comparative analysis intra and cross-national
Gabriella Punziano
Gabriella Punziano – Università degli studi di Napoli Federico II – Dipartimento di Sociologia Gino Germani, Vico Monte della Pietà, 1 – 80136 – mobile: +39 392 70 62 264
Autonomy or unanimity?
Local net welfare and European welfare: a comparative analysis intra and cross-national
Europeizzazione e integrazione comunitaria: riconsiderare le tipologie di welfare nelle decisioni sul sociale tra Europa e contesti locali
Gabriella Punziano
Introduction
The presentedpaper seeks to deepen the double pressure of Europeanization and decentralization of social policy through a geographic and politicalcomparative analysis that fails to contemplate together the supranational, thecontextual and the local dynamics. Specifically, the process of Europeanization in the field of public and social policy aims to a strategic convergence towards full EU integration pursued, however, through decentralized mechanisms, subsidiarity and open method of coordination (Graziano, 2004; Cremaschi, 2006). This process is embodied on the phenomena of decentralization, proliferation and activation of the actors, construction of local decision-making network, a revaluation of the territorial dimension, then, which is simultaneously accompanied by the desire to rebuild a supranational and unique identity that can withstand the challenges of the downturn in some of its suburbs and along with global competition. In review and conceiving through a comparative study a different typology of welfare systems that are to constitute the European scene so pervaded by the double pressure of Europeanization and decentralization (Lebfried, Pierson, 1995; De Leonardis, 1998; Le Gales, 2002; Gullién, Palier, 2004), community integration becomes the discriminate variable. In the analytical dimension outlined emerges, therefore, two separate and distinct investigation plans. A semantic-terminological on one hand, and a territorial onthe other.The first concerns the need to investigate the development of social policy that affecting the welfare passing through the EU integration, while the second takes into account a reality consists of multiple levels of not only interconnected but nested between them. We are talking about Europe, its nations and local contexts in which these take shape and life. For the complexity of combining two different plans so different, in addressing at their analysis, we chose to fit within an approach that could bring out in an integrated research structure and not necessarily convergent that makes possible to investigate the field of analysis chosen both in macro then in micro perspective. This approach is represented by Mixed Methods that does not return simply the sum of the results of the methods, techniques and tools that tends to integrate, but leads to the development of an interpretive tool and knowledge that becomes itself the result, and it is the general system of classification of the developments respect to considered welfare models. In such a general system the integration of the analytical results obtained by pursuing different strategies in both the quantity and the qualitative side, happens considering the same results of each method applied as attributes to define the types that contribute to the formation of the classification. The integration of analysis plans and different analytical methods does not mean to question the effectiveness of the classics in the classification ofwelfare systems, but rather it will offer new opportunities to bring out details that seem unmanageable or undetectable when the reality investigated is vast by extension, history and cultural heritage as Europe, but even more when we want to break up this reality and put it in a comparative design.
1. Mix Methodology and Classification: the emergence of typological axes (8000)
From what point does it spread and how does it take the decisions on the social? This is the opening question of the study that is proposed. Question that brings into play, as seen, more and more levels of analysis and analytic objects. It starts from a semantic continuum that is formed around the consideration of the objects of analysis in a sort of descent of abstraction. First of all we find the concept of public policy considered as a family-generating social policies, the second object analyzed. Within the latter they must be constituted, focusing on the essential and context parameters, different classifications of welfare systems, however, classifications that are to falter when the constitution of a Community united and convergent, rather than being a called factor, becomes the horizon desired.This thanks to the development of some key features related both to the developments of the public and of social policy, such as the process of Europeanization underlying convergence and coordination process decentralized that is essentially made of subsidiarity and territorial specificities. The factor that governs these forces is to be found in the ability of contexts, whether national or local, to stretch to full community integration, integration that can be achieved mainly in two directions. Integration directed to the context (social and territorial cohesion policy), which points to revalue and make it competitive and able to face the global challenges facing, and aintegration directed to the person (social inclusion policies), that link, however, the ensure the enjoyment of the common standard of living and investing on individuals making they a part of an active and participatory process of inclusion (place and people, Donzelot, 2003). Two different ways of conceiving the process of integration, yet not always fully compatible, because of the scarcity of common resources when it decides to intervene in the social and the huge amount of involvement of different stakeholders that this process may entail. It is clear that working with such a framework of objects and events makes it impossible to apply a static and too constrained approach, but makes it necessary, at the same time, that this approach can maneuver within both of micro and macro dynamics of those. One of the fundamental limitations in the study of policies and welfare is the research method used that,because there’s only one possible way to analyze a phenomenon,appears to be aimed or at statistical impressionism or extremely sectored and related to a particular case. More methodologically developed studies using combined tools, methods and techniques of different nature that can remedy the partiality of knowledge that is returned by the tools used to investigate it. The prospect of operating within a single model, that retrieves these fragments of reality and knowledge to put them back together and make sense, is adopted groped for overcoming the limitations of individual approaches considered and find solutions within themselves but especially in the explosion of the paths of confluence or divergence of the results as the application of the individual methods can lead. Therefore, without losing the advantages and disadvantages that several methods of analysis in policy have occurred –such as the decision model (Bobbio, in Capano, Giuliani, 1996), implementation model (Elmore, 1979), classification (Lowi, 1964), comparison (Naldini, 2007) and evaluation (Radaelli, 1996) –we have chosen to adopt the perspective of Mixed Methods.Through this it can be possible to made a comparative research design that feeds on items related to indicators analysis of social performance through the application, in macro perspective, of the multilevel analysis and clustering techniques, while, in micro perspective, it can be able to emerge from implementationstudies, impact and network analysis, the elements for the creation of decision-making and the impact that this has on the structuring of the current addresses of welfare in order to make a organic classification. To approach this complexity of the background, the research design presented tends to recover spaces of analytical complexity by dividing the pattern of analysis in sequential steps built the one into the other as sub-designs within the overall more complex design (nested, Crassewell, 2003).
The research drawing in question, called Complex Mixed Methods Design, presents, therefore, the features of the sequentiality (inpart explorative and in an other explanatory), and examination of multiple levels in a incorporateddesign that is not limited to a simple interpretation of the results, but to elevate the analysis at the general system of classification. The first analytical step aims to answer the questions of definition and method relating to objects of analysis, it is qualitative and is aimed at the selection of methods and analytical procedures more consistent. Reasoning, that had brought to adoption ofMixedapproach. The second step, quantitative, provides multivariate and multilevel analysis in comparativeoptic of secondary data relating to the social contexts of investigation through the analysis of social indicators. This step made possible to define an initial screening and a clear plan for the selection of cases based on these differences take on what it has been designated as a discriminant variable in defining the current addresses of welfare: the index of community integration. Study of implementation and impact analysis on perceptions recorded by witnesses, are the goals of the third step of analysis, qualitative and played on some specific projects related to cohesion (place) and inclusion policies (people) as the functional ramifications of integration. These projects were selected from the context indicated in the previous step.Finally, we identified networks of actors in the local areas and their space of action born of possible gaps or inconsistencies in legislation or from the shape of the networks themselves. This characterizes the fourth step, qualitative for tool and quantitative for analysis, developed in order to identify the mechanisms of mediation and conflict resulting in decision making for management, power and resourcescontrol, with regard to social policies. The essential mechanism of integration is in translating both the two languages, qualitative and quantitative, in a common code for both approaches involved in the construction of the general model of classification. Each result shown by the different step becomes a functional resource to the definition of the basic elements that substantiate the different types derived from the model. Qualitative and quantitative data are transformed into features and attributes that can live together, without any particular ontological and epistemological issues in a multi-methods model.
The Mixed Methods, as we will demonstrate, lends themselves perfectly to research drawings that provide more objectives related and interconnected in order to obtain a result consistent and valid respect both to the macro and the micro level. The strength of this approach is that it consists in the evolution of an integrated system that manages to make the combination of quality and quantity without defacing or altering the potential of the results obtained by the methods included in the design and individually designed. The typological classification system which is attained through the application of the design presented has, therefore, the breath of an analysis carried out on international welfare systems and the details of an analysis performed on selected cases in local contexts. Its advantage is to be, before the result, the instrument of translation and reception of results and of the language inherent to the different approaches, but with its life and characteristics. A sort of interpretive grid which is constructed as they are advanced between the different phases of the research design that requiresto answer to interrelated and complementary questions. The consistency of the results thus obtained is not guaranteed and the same possibilities, that might arise incongruence, make the phases of the design open and ready to adapt during the course of the drawing. A complex design but flexible to ensure a neighborhood of intent to the reality investigated, in turn, also it just diverse and heterogeneous.
2. Analytical developments and main results(3500)
The first step of analysis, which has provided for the reflection on the objects involved and the methods for the construction of an integrated design, brings with it to a very particular result. Born, from it, the axes of the type underlying the general model of classification. Retrieves a comparative approach to policy, that does not replace but complements the geographical comparisons and contributes to better highlight the specific characteristics related to the nature of the policies investigated with respect to the common elements with other effects attributable to institutional policies directly manipulated by the legislative european actor. These two characterizations of the method are inserted on the delimitation of the typological axis by binding to the possibility of covering two floors, semantic and territorial, in the multi-level reality that is considered in this study. The semantic level goes to stretch to a size of local intervention and an intervention on the person, a single continuum that can be defined as the axis of integration. The second continuum refers to the territorial issue that unfolds between a supranational actor, Europe, national actors and sub-national actors, the local environments. A question is not merely logistics, but which belongs to the broader issues of relevance are those related to governance and legislation. Because of this feature dual connotation of this continuum,it comes to superimposed on other axes that intersect with this, according to not accurate or stable dynamics. It is the “central government - local autonomy” axis, “decision – implementation” axis, “Europeanization – location” axis and “activation-welfarism” axis. The ability to reach accurately classified comes from the origin of the typological axes and stems, therefore, from these two continuum and two intersecting axes, which are the starting point for the design. Therefore, if desired, at this point, to extrapolate the effect of the method (comparative analysis of policy vs. comparative geographical analysis), the continuum intersecting (semantic vs. territorial) and the major transformations that occurred in relation to social policies (locationvs. europeanization; activation vs. welfare; convergence vs. local autonomy; center vs. periphery), the axes which we come to for the constitution of the basis of our type can be represented as follows:
Fig. 1: Typological axis result by the first step centered on defining and methodological questions
Source: our elaboration
From this point onwards it is possible to treat the results of other techniques in the mix design as caratterisitche and attributes to be accommodated in the overall type in order to verify the initial hypothesis of dividing the integration with respect to the provision and development of existing welfare systems. In particular, assuming a detachment in terms of regional or social development (cohesion vs. inclusion) or europeanization or localization, leads to stretching of trends but does not exclude with each other. It is the particular form of admixture between these different phenomena and addresses on the welfare system which comes into particular systems to be treated as a warning and not as absolute and perfectly generalizable classifications. The groundwork for the emergence of a type not only evolving arises, especially for the realization of an integrated analytical tool that is able to accommodate differentiated elements and highly heterogeneous in nature and origin.
2.1 Analisi Macro (15000)From the study of social indicators to the definition of the quadrants
In the second step of the research the question that has placed was what, how and how much has changed in the welfare systems from the classic types until we get to Europe at 27. In particular it asked if the actual trend was towards a unitary system of welfare, or if it should be the case of think at something more fragmented and local. Through the analysis of social indicators with the construction of regression models and multiple blocks regression (PLS Path Modeling, Esposito Vinzi, 1998) on disjoint levels, the multilevel analysis on contextual variations taken together (Hox, 2004), the Rebus-PM algorithm (Esposito Vinzi, 1998) and Cluster Analysis, has sought an answer to these questions with the aim to draw from these analyzes the elements that can made possible the European nations and regions projection into space obtained by typological intersection of the axes described above. For the necessity of deepening that this study need, but also for reasons of time and resources, we had chosen not investigate the situation of each individual nation, but to select those that emerge for managing acute differences since to become explanatory of a particular field of attributes. Therefore, itdemonstrated the hypothesis of the linear function ofintegration with respect to cohesion and inclusion, it will be to consolidate the establishment of a single axis of integration at two polarities, one that looks to an economic and territorial development, the other that looks at a more proper social and the individual development. This configuration lends itself, therefore, to be taken as the dividing line between the welfare systems, when we work in the field of comparative policy. Added to this is the territorial component which leads to the emergence of spatial-regulations configurations that affect, in turn, on what may be the directions of development of the welfare itself. What follows is that the models classically understood, referring to Ferrera,(1994) begin to mix and blend. It lose the classic foundations that crates a frame at welfare systems by the difference between recipients, coverage of interventions, the institutional configurations and forkfactor geopolitical, social and even the clear delineation of physical-spatial experience can lead similar behavior of welfare. The breaking point between models moves rather than on the factors of differentiation, fundamental in a moment in which theEuropean soft law prevails in matter of social, on those of convergence, relevant in the moment when Europe began to establish and delineate precise trajectories and binding respect to social growth. Therefore, considering the index of community integration, falls on the primacy of the principle of spatial differentiation and is ever more important those of economic development in two directions economic-territorial (cohesion) and personal-social (inclusion), which leads us to classify nations according to their levels of performance achieved. Driven at Europeanisation or at localanisation, leading to stretching to two other trends, on the one hand we have a European welfare, or Europeanization welfare based on the full convergence of Nations in a single integrated model, on the other hand we have the birth of many local net welfare as a small decision-making centers of gravity from which part the impetus for the empowerment of characteristics of development of the different contexts, while maintaining the balance of the basic objective of convergence in the results of economic and social development achieved. It made in opposition a long-term planning and a global vision to a micro-focused vision based on the immediate and the need of developing in a European model that fix roofs of convergence.